Last September The BRAD BLOG, unlike the corporate-owned media, offered detailed coverage of a U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights hearing on the spate of GOP voter suppression laws (PART 1 and PART 2).

Now, Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films has produced a powerful video that exposes the Koch-funded assault on your democracy, along with a petition that you can sign demanding that the Eric Holder-led Department of Justice live up to its name...

Voting is a right and must be protected. The only way to do that is with reliable documentation. Banks want ID before dispensing money from your account, why should we not protect this, one of our valuable assets as well?

In addition to the justice department, congress, particularly the democratic controlled senate needs to act. They have the authority under the 14th amendment to reduce the number of seats in the house to reflect the "abridgement" of voting rights caused by these restrictive voter id laws.

here is the relevant section.

Section 2. Representatives shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State, excluding Indians not taxed. But when the right to vote at any election for the choice of electors for President and Vice President of the United States, Representatives in Congress, the Executive and Judicial officers of a State, or the members of the Legislature thereof, is denied to any of the male inhabitants of such State, being twenty-one years of age, and citizens of the United States, or in any way abridged, except for participation in rebellion, or other crime, the basis of representation therein shall be reduced in the proportion which the number of such male citizens shall bear to the whole number of male citizens twenty-one years of age in such State.

Mike @1: If you bothered to link to the articles covering the U.S. Senate Subcommittee Hearing you would have learned (1) that the only form of "voter fraud" that polling place photo ID restrictions prevents is in person impersonation; (2) that even alleged instances of in person impersonation are so rare as to be virtually non-existent, and that (3) polling place photo ID laws have absolutely nothing to do with "protecting" the right to vote, as you put it.

Studies reveal that millions of Americans stand to be disenfranchised by photo ID restrictions --- some who have voted their entire lives, including elderly nuns in South Bend Indiana and a Korean War Vet, have already been prevented in IN from voting.

Yes, voting is a right, Mike. And you should be outraged that someone who put his life on the line in Korea to protect your right to vote was denied the franchise in a U.S. election because of an ill-conceived, polling place photo ID restriction.

As Prof. Justin Levitt aptly noted, polling place photo ID restrictions are not merely a solution in search of a problem, but established that the "solution" is so ill-fitted to the grossly overstated problem as to be equated to amputating one's foot in order to cure a "potential" hangnail.

No, Mike, it is you who have been taken in by the propaganda, what Nazi Minister Joseph Goebbels referred to as "The Big Lie."

The Big Lie, in this case, is the bogus claim that we need polling place photo ID restrictions to prevent "voter fraud." Their purpose is well established --- preventing students, the elderly and the poor (people who ordinarily do not vote for the GOP and the 1%) from voting.

If you turn off Rush Limbaugh and Fox "News" long enough, you might even be confronted with the truth!

In his written testimony, Levitt revealed that, since 2000, there were "nine allegations of votes [in general elections] that might have involved votes cast by individuals impersonating others," but those nine may be the result of "poll worker error or voter confusion...During the same period, 400 million votes were cast...Even assuming that each of the nine votes were fraudulent, that amounts to a relevant fraud rate of 0.000002 percent. Americans are struck and killed by lightning more often."

In response to Mike @#1. You are absolutely correct when you state, "Voting is a right and must be protected." The purpose of voter suppression laws is take away that right, just as the video describes.

So I was just doing some of my ongoing homework about election integrity matters and in listening to Brad and von Spakovsky on the Tavis Smiley Show a few years back I hear von Spakovsky mention a federal grand jury case in Chicago where 100,000 fraudulent votes were cast. Tried to find follow-up info(I am not the best in the world at that sort of internet searching). Found a lot of interesting stuff but so far no one rebutting that claim. All I could find on it was von Spakovsky's own Heritage Foundation piece that was the initial reference.

Brad, Ernie, anybody got any info on that one? Was that a real case that happened? In all my reading I've only seen false claims of voter fraud convincingly debunked. Never saw one piece of evidence of something significant and real that might be a reason why Repubs are so obsessed with the voter fraud business. Or might be a legitimate cover for why they're pretending to care about it.

Anybody got anything on this alleged giant voter fraud case in Chicago in 1982? Von Spakovsky seems like a completely disreputable character but I don't like to categorically rule out the possibility that he might say SOMETHING that's reality based. And as it runs counter to everything else I've ever heard on the subject I'm particularly interested to find out if there's any merit to his claim.